The sticky issue of consent in street photography
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The sticky issue of consent in street photography
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Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography
#2The legal situation is similar in Germany, but I wouldn't do street photography here, either.
The article discusses morality and ethics versus personal preference, but that's just high-brow talk.
The point is that today, once someone photographs you, you cannot possibly know where he will post or publish your photo. And yes, that's creepy.
Decades ago photographers maybe showed your picture at a gallery or exhibition. Today everything goes to Instagram, and someone will probably ridicule me for some small thing (a stain on my shirt?), and maybe thousands will pile on, and maybe everyone in my social circle will see it? Embarrassing.
Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography
#3Who will build a SaaS that replaces the people in the pictures with ”this person does not exist”? Keeping facial expressions etc the same.
Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography
#4The legal situation is similar in Germany, but I wouldn't do street photography here, either. The article discusses morality and ethics versus personal preference, but that's just high-brow talk. The point is that today, once someone photographs you, you cannot possibly know where he will post or publish your photo. And yes, that's creepy. Decades ago photographers maybe showed your picture at a gallery or exhibition…
Photographers have always had this obnoxious nature to them in many circumstances. Similar to journalists in many ways.
I think the US approach ultimately makes the most sense. There’s a societal benefit to being able to capture images and stories.
Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography
#5some trivia from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0322802/trivia?item=tr0618399 "Another reason for filming extensively in Japan is that laws requiring non-consenting participants to have their faces blurred out do not apply in Japan"
Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography
#6Who will build a SaaS that replaces the people in the pictures with ”this person does not exist”? Keeping facial expressions etc the same.
It's a neat idea, but take the second photo in the article for example: The guy gawking (well who knows, but it could be construed that way) at the women doesn't even have his face visible. Yet just from the clothing and context, his friends and colleagues would probably be able to identify him.
That said, if it works, your suggestion would probably cover >90% of cases.
Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography
#7I always found this issue to be confusing. There are literally hundreds of cameras tracking me every day: in the parking lot, in front of the ATM, when I buy my groceries… I have no ability to know when I’m being recorded or what happens to those recordings.
Yet some people are upset if they get photographed by a human photographer in a public space.
Is the only difference that the photo was taken with intent?
Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography
#8I’m willing to be swayed on this issue but to me the word “consent” implies permission, and the word permission implies some type of authority. In the case of photography in public there is no authority so no consent is needed. I personally believe that, for the most part, ethics and legality align here. I don’t think it is unethical to photograph and publish a picture of someone in public. However, I think there may be an ethical dilemma if the picture is unintentionally sexually suggestive. I still don’t believe it should be legislated. The societal and personal benefits guaranteed by the right which allows us to photograph in public is worth more than the protection that would come through legislation.
Additionally the picture in question is not sexual to me at all. I don’t even understand how anyone could construe it as sexual. To me it’s a raw, emotional photograph that perfectly describes what it’s like to mother children in a large city. It’s an amazing moment
Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography
#9I studied video production in college. For one project, I did a documentary on a non-profit that was working in a high-crime area. We drove down the street with a video camera pointed out the window * As we drove by a house with some young men on the porch, one of them saw the camera and yelled angrily, "Yo, what the fuck!" and started chasing us. After that experience, I've never been able to point my camera at someone without getting their verbal consent first. I worked for awhile as a photographer/videographer for a school, and struggled to get good footage of students because of that.
* (With the documentary, we hadn't intended to record and people without consent, and when we finally published it, we had signed consent forms for everyone who appeared in it.)
Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography
#10The legal situation is similar in Germany, but I wouldn't do street photography here, either. The article discusses morality and ethics versus personal preference, but that's just high-brow talk. The point is that today, once someone photographs you, you cannot possibly know where he will post or publish your photo. And yes, that's creepy. Decades ago photographers maybe showed your picture at a gallery or exhibition…
In the US it’s pretty well established that art is exempt from privacy laws. It gets muddy[1]when you try to use it commercially: so you can sell a photograph as art, but you can’t use it without consent or permission if the art is for commercial purposes (to advertise, for example).
A well known case is a Hasidic Jew suing photographer DiCorcia. New York State sided with the photographer: http://www.artistrights.info/nussenzweig-v-dicorcia
[1]Whats the rule if you have an exhibit and the gallery or whatever wants to advertise they have an exhibit by the artist. Can they put up big banners with the art? Is that commercial use?